


Nine-tenths

by SaltCore



Series: Making Luck [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Dragon ex Machina, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protective Hanzo Shimada, deadeye is magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-25 17:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16665184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltCore/pseuds/SaltCore
Summary: Possession is nine-tenths of ownership, and Jesse stole Deadeye fair and square.Luckily for Jesse, other spirits seem to agree.





	Nine-tenths

**Author's Note:**

> This does rely on the previous work in the series.

Peacekeeper only holds six shots, but eight men die.

The Eye smolders in Jesse’s skull, very much awake and searching for more victims. In this moment, it doesn’t hurt. That part comes later. In this moment, it only feels _right_.

There’s a whisper, curling like smoke in the back of Jesse’s mind, telling him to keep going. Those men were arms dealers, merchants of death, and they would have facilitated so much suffering for their own greed. Jesse was just to kill them. Jesse would be just to do more. That whisper tells him to think of all the suffering he could prevent, all the wrongs he could right. With the Eye, he could kill every evil thing walking the earth. Purge their sins by shedding their blood. Grind evil men to nothing under his heel. Every cold blooded murderer, every black hearted industrialist, every bastard that would raise his hand against his wife—

Jesse grits his teeth and closes both his eyes.

It does this. It wants bloodshed, and it will put on the airs of justice to get it. But if he gave in, it wouldn’t stop. He’d end up little better than the monster he stole the Eye from. The Eye only wants slaughter.

The Eye rages at being denied, tries to split his skull in its fury. Jesse presses his hand over it, trying to hold his head together. It’ll pass, Jesse reminds himself. It always does.

“Jesse!” Hanzo bellows, loud enough to make the comm clip. Jesse glances over his shoulder, looking up to Hanzo’s perch far above. “You should have waited for me!”

“Wasn’t time. Besides, thought you were gettin’ sick of this town.” Jesse replies, trying to sound flip.

Hanzo swears and vanishes from sight, probably coming down. The mission’s over anyway. There’s nobody left to smuggle anything anywhere. Jesse holsters his gun and pulls his hat down low over the Eye, then walks over to one of the corpses.

He searches the body for a phone, finds one, and uses it to dial emergency services. The call connects, with a soft voiced AI asking why he’s called in Mandarin. Jesse’s rusty, but he says he heard gunshots and then sets the phone down. The locals can figure it out from there.

Hanzo is waiting for him by the car, standing tall and tense. Once Jesse is in arms’ reach, he doesn’t hesitate to take Jesse’s face in his hands to look for something amiss. This particular ritual of theirs is more about soothing Hanzo that not, though Jesse would never say as much out loud. Besides, he’s touched by the attention.

One use doesn’t make for anything dramatic, but Hanzo still stares hard into the Eye. Sometimes Jesse wonders if he’s trying to glare it into submission. It’s sweet, in his way. Jesse can tell by the way Hanzo’s lips thin he hasn’t found anything especially alarming. His hands linger for a few seconds, broad and warm, before he finally lets Jesse go.

“I’ll drive back,” Hanzo says. He doesn’t wait for Jesse to agree or object, simply opens the passenger door and walks around to the driver’s side. Jesse drops into the seat and pulls his hat over his face to block the light. A few minutes after the car starts moving, Jesse feels the weight of Hanzo’s hand on his knee. Hanzo squeezes once, then lets it rest there.

Neither says anything on the way back to the safe house, but tension radiates off Hanzo. He had taken particular interest in the Eye—or, rather, everything Jesse does to keep it under control—but there are gaps in their knowledge that they can’t fill, and that makes Hanzo uneasy. He doesn’t trust the Eye and doesn’t like Jesse using it. Jesse damn well doesn’t trust it himself, but he also likes drawing wind. Using it isn’t worse than being dead.

It’s dark when they reach the safe house, which is a small mercy. Hanzo parks around the back and leads the way up the path, weapon at the ready. Together, they clear the house, finding nothing amiss. Hanzo only turns on a single light in the kitchen to give them the bare minimum they need to see.

“Where are your things?” Hanzo asks.

He could only mean the incense and tincture. Jesse had used the last of it in Numbani six weeks ago. He hadn’t been in one place longer than a few days since then, and certainly no place where he had contacts to get more.

 “‘M out. Out of stims too.”

Hanzo’s expression sours, obvious even in the dim light. The stims would probably have been a bad idea anyway. He’d have simply been that much more tired when he finally slept, that much more vulnerable when he’s found again. What he needs is the rite, but if wishes were horses—

Jesse sighs.

“Uh, maybe you oughta take the bed. I can sleep on the floor in the other room, I don’t wanna—”

“Absolutely not!” Hanzo snaps, looking angry in a way Jesse didn’t anticipate. “I will not have you sleeping _on the floor_ on top of everything else.”

Jesse isn’t going to win _that_ argument, and his head hurts too much to even try. He holds his hands up in defeat.

“You just gotta some sleep somehow, you hear? No sense in us both suffering.”

Hanzo makes a dismissive gesture, cavalier as always about his own rest, and shoos Jesse away to get ready for bed. Jesse brushes his teeth in nothing but the light from the streetlamp outside and leaves his clothes in a pile beside his duffle. He takes Peacekeeper and sets her on the floor in easy reach and drops into the bed. It wasn’t comfortable last night, but it’s heaven now.

Jesse listens to Hanzo prepare to join him, hums in satisfaction when Hanzo slips into the bed behind him and presses up against his back. Hanzo snakes one arm around his chest and kisses the nape of Jesse’s neck.

“I’ll be right here,” Hanzo whispers.

 

* * *

 

“ _Nadie_!”

It’s a car crash of a voice, grating and raw and inhuman, and Jesse runs from it as fast as he can. Shadows swipe and paw at him, every one of them cold and heavy. The Eye hums in his head, yearning for its true master. Jesse presses a palm over it, as if that could possibly silence it.

“Where are you, Nadie? I can smell you. I can smell your fear.”

Jesse trips, falls to the ground. He scrabbles forward, tries to keep moving, but he can’t get back to his feet, the shadows won’t let him. Those lumbering footsteps are close now, the grotesque dead thing almost upon him.

“You can’t keep running from me. I’ll catch you and scatter your bones across every corner of the Pit.”

He’s not really there, Jesse reminds himself, trembling in the dirt. He can’t be truly hurt from inside a dream. One cold hand wraps around his ankle and jerks him back, then there’s another hand gripping him around the neck and lifting him up.

Jesse again is face to face with one of the greater dead. Staring into two sockets he emptied as little more than a boy. The rank breath spilling out of its mouth makes him want to gag.

“Give it back!” it snarls with a mouth full of rotting teeth.

“Go fuck yourself,” Jesse wheezes, kicking out as best he can.

The dead thing shakes him, howling, and Jesse tries desperately to pry its hand away. It paws at his face with the other, black nails scratching. Jesse tries to fight it off, but he can’t stop the fingers clawing at his eye. It digs in.

It’s not real.

But it _hurts_.

Jesse screams. He thrashes and punches, but he can’t get any leverage, can’t get a hit. Even if it claws his face to pieces, it can’t get the Eye, can’t kill Jesse, but that doesn’t mean a thing to him right now. It digs a deep gouge into Jesse’s cheek and grips his neck even tighter, and it feels like his head is going to pop clean off his neck. Then—

Light and thunder explodes around them, and there’s a roar that rattles Jesse’s teeth. The dead thing drops him and suddenly he’s covered by something heavy that presses him into the dirt.

“ _OURS_!” howl two voices, raging in unison. “ _He is under our protection_!”

Jesse hears the dead thing scream, but pinned as he is he can’t see what’s happening. He tries to look as best he can, and he can see two scaled legs, with feet ending huge talons. The scales are an iridescent blue, lit from within with a flickering glow.

“He has something of mine! He _stole_ it!”

“ _Go!_ ”

“Not until he gives it back!”

The only reply is another roar, and then more screaming. The sound of tearing flesh and dull, wet thumps. A gurgling groan.

As suddenly as it appeared, the weigh vanishes, and then Jesse is rolled onto his back. He’s looking up into two sets of eyes, cold and blue with slits for pupils, set above long snouts full of gleaming teeth.

Dragons. A pair of them.

One leans forward and sniffs around his right eye. The other paws carefully at his neck. He can feel the talon drag at his skin, but it doesn’t break it.

“Reckless,” one says.

“Brave,” says the other.

“This creature will not come for you again.”

“And should it try we will be waiting.”

A mouth full of fangs takes him gently by the arm, a snout pushes at his back, and between the two of them he’s set again on his feet. They curl their long bodies into a lose circle around him and stare, unblinking.

He stands completely still, as afraid now as he was of the greater dead. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the mangled form of the creature that had been haunting him for most of his life. He does not want to offend these creatures.

“Th—thank you, esteemed spirits.”

“Hanzo’s enemies are our enemies.”

“His treasure, our treasure.”

Then, there’s a soft rasping noise. Jesse almost wants to call it laughter.

“And you, _Nadie_ ,” the dragon’s voice curls around the false name in a way that could only be amusement. “for your cunning alone deserve a better fate.”

“Now, come, it’s time to wake up.”

 

* * *

 

Jesse’s eyes snap open. It’s still dark. He must not have been asleep long. Hanzo’s arm is still around him, his hand curled loosely against his chest. Jesse can feel his slow breathing against his back.

His head doesn’t hurt, he realizes. He reaches up and touches his face, finds no blood, no wounds.

Hanzo jerks, makes a small noise, then pushes himself up, letting the cold night air rush in between them. Jesse shivers in spite of himself.

“Oh, Jesse,” Hanzo says softly, brushing his fingers across Jesse’s shoulders.

“’M awake, Han.”

Hanzo’s fingers freeze.

“I thought it was starting.”

Jesse rolls onto his back and looks up at Hanzo. In what little light is leaking in from outside, Jesse can see his furrowed brows, his tight lipped frown, his heavy, tired eyes. Hanzo reaches out and starts petting Jesse’s hair instead, unthinkingly affectionate with his worry hanging heavy over him. Jesse takes his hand, kisses his palm.

“It did, and now it’s over.”

Hanzo’s frown deepens with his confusion. Jesse pokes his tattooed forearm.

“I got some help.”

“ _What_?” Hanzo hisses, gaping down at his own tattoo.

“I think they took a shine to me,” Jesse says with a low chuckle.

Hanzo shifts, sits up properly and folds his legs underneath him. He closes his eyes and blows a long breath out of his lungs. On the next inhale, the tattoo glints blue, visible only because of the dark. Hanzo opens his eyes, and there’s the faintest pinprick of light shining in his pupils. He’s frowning again.

“Why are they insisting your name is Nobody?”

Jesse barks a laugh.

“It’s kind of a long story.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
